Recipes: Meat

December 11, 2012

Something magical happens when you combine thinly sliced
pieces of pork belly with an assertive pickled vegetable and tofu. I didn’t
realize that kind of synergy till I made Korean tofu stir-fried with kimchi and
pork belly (dubu kimchi). It’s a drinking classic, I was told by my friend
Linda Lim, a Korea- born woman whose
petite size belies her enormous ability to eat and drink.

I made dubu kimchi repeatedly to get the recipe down for the
tofu book, and in the process learned to understand how the three ingredients
worked. The pork belly lent its wonderful richness to soften the blow of the
harsh kimchi, which had to be the stinky, mature kind for the dish to shine.
The tofu played an intermediary role to soak up the meat’s richness and the
umami funk of the pickled cabbage.

That said, I couldn’t resist making this stir-fry from Naomi
Duguid’s sensational Burma: Rivers of
Flavor, released just this fall. With her former husband, she
wrote landmark works such as Beyond the
Great Wall, and Hot, Sour, Salty
Sweet. This is her solo performance and it’s compelling, well sized for cooking and reading. Unlike her previous large scale productions, Burma is a book meant for using in the kitchen or holding on the sofa, not displaying on the coffee table.

Naomi has been traveling to Burma for decades, observing,
tasting, and noting a great deal of detail about the country, which stands at a
true culinary crossroads of South Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia. All this
means that if you’re adept at cooking foods from Asia and venturing to Asian
markets, you’ll find Burma to be a splendid book to cook from. If you’re not
adept at those cuisines, then Naomi gives you a pass and says it’s okay to just
be an armchair cook and eater. In any event, you’ll relish the heartfelt writing and immense research in Burma.

April 30, 2012

While I’ve cooked with Chinese fermented black beans for years, I didn’t realized how versatile they were until I had about 2 pounds of them on hand, leftover from working on the Asian Market Shopper mobile app and the Asian Tofu cookbook.

The little beans are not the same as what you cook up for a pot of cuban black beans! In fact, they are slightly moist and soft, a preserved seasoning ingredient used in many southern Chinese (Cantonese) kitchens. Expect salty, pungent, and winy qualities from the beans.

Wanting to use them up, I started cooking with them, mining my Chinese cookbook collection for recipes and ideas. When I was through, I had enough information about fermented black beans (dou chi in Mandarin, dul see in Cantonese, dau/tau xi in Vietnamese) and a small collection of delectable recipes.

February 15, 2012

This is what we just had for dinner. It’s not a great photo but tells the story of how last Sunday’s tri-tip and potatoes got turned into something “new.” My husband and I don’t eat a ton of meat so what we cook actually gets used up in many other meals during the course of a week.

Tonight it was a matter of eating up the roast, which we’d simply rubbed with lots of kosher salt, pepper, and dried summer savory, seared it stove top and popped it in the oven at 425 for 15 minutes per pound for medium or medium-rare (aim for 125-135F and rest for 10 minutes). You can also rub soy sauce or fish sauce on the roast along with pepper and garlic to marvelous effect. As we were getting things ready for dinner, Rory said, “I wish there was some gravy.”

That’s how this little impromptu sauce started. I remembered a conversation I’d had with chef Douglas Keane of Cyrus in Healdsburg about the virtues of combining miso and mustard – something he’d picked up from a renowned chef in Kyoto. Years ago, I made a simple red wine sauce with lots of shallot and whole grain mustard from a Martha Stewart recipe. There was a tub of dashi stock in the fridge to serve as my stealth umami infusion. With all of that in mind, I made a quick savory-sweet-tart sauce for the beef. As with past posts on repurposing leftovers, this one is also about how I cook on the fly.

November 28, 2011

Despite being a low-meat eater, I do enjoy gnawing on a good rib now and then. Pork ribs are typically what I cook when the urge emerges, but this recipe, adapted from Jennifer McLagan’s Odd Bits cookbook, features lamb ribs. Never had them? You should, especially if you love the gaminess of lamb.

Odd Bits is about trying or revisiting cuts that are often overlooked these days because many consumers gravitate toward tender, boneless meat. If you like rack of lamb, the spare ribs are an extension of it that you may have not tasted. I'm not sure where lamb spare ribs go after the fanciful rack is rendered; they ought to be sold right next to each other. That said, lamb spare ribs are wonderful. They have a decent amount of fat so that during cooking, the fat’s rich flavor permeates the flesh. They are also reasonably priced.

Sometimes that lamb goodness can be too much, which is why McLagan’s Asian-inflected recipe intrigued me. The tart-sweet spiciness of the tamarind glaze cuts the gaminess of the lamb. Fish sauce lends an umami undercurrent. Instead of fresh chile in the glaze, I substituted Sriracha chile sauce because it had tart-sweet heat to match the other ingredients. At the table, we tried adding Indian masala chilli sauce to the leftover glaze and it was superb, if not better than Thai Sriracha. Squirts of lime juice further brighten flavors.

Finally, this is great winter fare. The ribs get baked in the oven until tender and then rebaked with the glaze. (Hint: With the advance cooking, it’s great for holiday entertaining.) You could grill the ribs outdoors, weather permitting.

November 03, 2011

Because of France’s occupation of Vietnam from 1883 to 1954, many people assume that Viet cooking is heavily influenced by French foodways. While there are a handful of old French cookbooks written in Vietnamese, pure French cooking was mostly for those who could afford the ingredients.

As cultural survivalists, Vietnamese cooks wove French elements into their traditions, just like they did with other cultures that they came in contact with over the ages. That’s why Vietnamese food can confound as much as it delights. Beefy classics such as pho noodle soup and beef stew with tomato, lemongrass, and star anise are prime examples of fusion Vietnamese fare. There are so many Eastern and Western elements in those dishes that it's hard to simply call them Viet-Franco food.

On the other hand, Viet cooks can be inventive in replicating foreign culinary concepts, such as a beouf Bourguinon. That’s what I pondered as I set about making a red wine and beef stew, an cool weather dish that seemed fitting with the season. I typically rely on Julia Child’s master Zinfandel of Beef recipe from The Way to Cook when making a beef stew. This time around, I combined JC’s techniques with some borrowed from Jennifer McLagan’s new book, Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal. While there are a number of Asian-inspired recipes, most of McLagan’s recipes are western in nature. The point of the book is to encourage cooks to look beyond the usual “middle cuts,” such as beef and pork tenderloin, to discover the delicious appeal of ears, tongues, feet, and tails.

Asian cooks don’t have much issue with this concept as evidenced by the tripe and chicken feet at dim sum! Nevertheless it's good to be reminded of their exceptional flavor and textures. Asian markets have a wealth of odd bits but how often do we buy them nowadays? Not as much as our parents and grandparents used to as they practiced a head-to-tail approach to eating.

McLagan’s classic beef stew recipe was unfussy, called for igniting the red wine (pyrotechnic cooking always intrigues me), and baking the stew. She used rounds of beef shank. I had this frozen chuck roast from my annual share of a grass-fed cow:

As I was reviewing the recipes by Child and McLagan, I thought: How would I make this dish if I lived in Vietnam during the French colonial period? What if I had to cook for or with a French person during that era?